


Into Dust

by fletchfeathers



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Caev Threla, M/M, You're Welcome, hi have some sad about my gay cat, this is all caitlin's fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 05:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14993489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fletchfeathers/pseuds/fletchfeathers
Summary: For a moment, Bramblepelt can barely believe it, but – it’s Sparrowflight. His Sparrowflight.





	Into Dust

**Author's Note:**

> hello enjoy this little ramble about my gay tabaxi 
> 
> i started this waaaay back in like, november? and then caitlin wrote a fic for bramblepelt the other night and just totally reignited my love for him and i wanted to clean this up and finish it off, so have this i guess hooray!
> 
> (also i totally wrote this instead of doing work, whoops.)

Bramblepelt wakes to a bright light and brings up an arm to shield his face, blinking hard as his eyes adjust. 

He is lying in golden, autumnal grass that stretches out to a distant horizon, brushing at a barely pastel-blue sky. A warm breeze teases at his fur, gently inviting him to sit up and look around, and something in the back of his mind stirs with recognition as he takes in the scene. 

And, as he lifts himself out of the grass, he sees another heart-stoppingly familiar sight. 

A few feet away is the another Tabaxi. His fur is dark, striped brown, and he is dressed in periwinkle blue robes trimmed with white. He looks up, and as he turns to face Bramblepelt, the most beautiful pair of emerald eyes Bramblepelt has ever seen crinkle in the corners with a smile. 

For a moment, Bramblepelt can barely believe it, but – it’s Sparrowflight. His Sparrowflight.

Bramblepelt’s breath catches, tears stinging at his eyes, but he holds open his arms. Sure enough, Sparrowflight crosses the space between them and folds easily against Bramblepelt, as though Silvanus and the Great Cat himself conspired to carve the space between Bramblepelt’s arms just for him. 

Beautiful, clever Sparrowflight. He was so afraid this day would never come, but Bramblepelt feels the solid, reassuring warmth against his chest, and holds him close for fear he might disappear again. 

Gods, it’s been so long.

Sparrowflight nuzzles into Bramblepelt’s shoulder, and Bramblepelt pulls him back down into the soft, warm grass, something bright and warm flooding his chest as he breathes in the soft, familiar, lavender-incense smell of the love of his life, and feels the rumble of Sparrowflight’s purrs against his chest as he settles into the embrace.

“I missed you so much,” he murmurs into Sparrowflight’s ear. Sparrowflight smiles, raising a paw to Bramblepelt’s cheek, and Bramblepelt nuzzles into the velveted pad of his palm. “I promise, my love, I’ll never leave you again.” 

Sparrowflight looks up at him then, and there is something terribly sad in his lovely eyes. He strokes back over Bramblepelt’s head, gently brushing aside the tuft of fur on his forehead, and sighs quietly.

“Not this time,” Sparrowflight says, his voice strangely distant. “I’m sorry.”

“What –?” Bramblepelt asks, sitting up as the tabby Tabaxi pushes up to his feet. 

“Next time, perhaps,” he says, and he’s – _fading_ , drifting apart, and – no, no, he can’t leave again, he _can’t_ – 

Bramblepelt reaches for him, but his paws just go straight through Sparrowflight as the last of his image disappears from view. 

“Find me,” comes Sparrowflight’s voice, clear as day this time, echoing in Bramblepelt’s ears from what sounds like every direction at once. “Find me.”

Then, someone says, “Bramblepelt, wake up. Time to hit the road.”

Bramblepelt stirs to see Telvira moving on to wake the rest of the party, and he feels the dream draining away like sand through his fingers. A pang of guilt catches him as his mind scrambles to hold on to the image, the feeling - but soon enough, all Bramblepelt has is the ghost of Sparrowflight’s warmth and a barely-remembered conversation. 

_Find me._

The dream isn’t a new one. It’s floated in and out of Bramblepelt’s subconscious since he left his clan in search of Sparrowflight, and particularly since joining Task Force 10. Still, every time he has to wake up, it stings a little harder. 

_Find me._

He sits up and scrubs his face with his paws, reaching for his armour and weapons, and just as he is slinging his quiver of arrows across his back, he - he stops, freezes as though a dagger had just plunged into his back, because -

What colour were Sparrowflight’s eyes again?

-

The dream is pushed aside for a while after the Duke of Sunderheim confesses to his deal with the green dragon. With Task Force 10 instructed to travel to Knightstone and deal with the threat, Bramblepelt doesn’t exactly have time to think about much else. 

The journey is long, and Gods, is it tiring. It seems as though every town they pass through here in Everwealth holds some hidden horrors. It’s a miracle Bramblepelt even trusts the rest of his party any more – because, being honest with himself, other than Telvira and Nine, this isn’t exactly the party he would have chosen – let alone the strangers along the way.

Black Rock Landing was the worst. That they can all agree on.

The tiny town was supposedly holding a festival for one of its yearly holidays. It was innocent enough on the surface, a night of tricksters, elaborate costumes, fairground games and far too much alcohol (Bramblepelt, especially, could not hold his ale that night worth a damn). And, of course, the crown of white antlers for each of them where the rest of the town wore black. To single you out so you don’t get pranked, said the half-elf that met them at the gate; the same half elf that drugged them and kidnapped them from the tavern where they planned to spend the night to drag them all through a series of horrific torture chambers, designed to appease the town’s sadistic god that Bramblepelt didn’t care to remember the name of.

Bramblepelt still has patches of fur missing from the acid they poured on him and Nine, the vulnerable skin beneath roughened by the burns and corrosion, and he has yet to regain his trust for bartenders that are overly friendly with them. 

The journey has hardened him somewhat, made him colder; he can feel it in the way his party’s drunken laughter grates at him where once he would have happily joined in, and in the way his dreams are warped by visions of an airship crashing and burning, green scales and zombie-like villagers tearing each other apart, and his body burning as he writhed to escape the shower of acid, Nine screaming from the next chamber over, that sickening smile on the half elf’s face. 

And sometimes, sometimes, there’s Sparrowflight.

 _Find me._

At least, he thinks it's Sparrowflight. With each new dream, his image becomes hazier, like the shimmer of heat from the ground in midsummer.

And Sparrowflight doesn’t come to Bramblepelt any more. He’s always further and further away across the yellow field, his back turned. The sky isn’t blue any more but white, and then grey with encroaching clouds.

_Find me._

Always his voice, though, as clear as if Sparrowflight were standing right beside him.

 _Find me._  
For a time, the faintest smell of lavender incense, until that too fades away. 

_Find me._

Bramblepelt always tries to go to Sparrowflight, to close the aching distance between them, but the grass entangles his feet and roots him to the ground, leaving him reaching helplessly.

“I’m trying,” he says, the words heavy in his throat, and he can feel hot tears running through the fur on his cheeks. “I’m trying, Sparrowflight.”

 _Find me._

“Please - please don’t leave me -”

_Find me._

And Bramblepelt's clawing at empty air once again, and when he wakes, his stomach feels as though it’s full of stones.

Bramblepelt wants nothing more than to go home, but home is out there, missing. Home is the reason Bramblepelt ever left his family behind, the reason he still carries on despite having already been through Hell and back. 

Home is Sparrowflight, and Bramblepelt has to find him.

He just has to.


End file.
